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JavaScript is Eating the World

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Re: JavaScript is Eating the World

#311

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Take away the web platform, would you still use JS for anything ?

Does that really matter? The web is the past, present, and definitely the future. There will be less, and less native apps, and more and more web apps. JS is here to stay, and I'm glad big companies are pouring tons of R&D into making it faster, and easier to use.

It does: let's stop saying JS is great and be honest. The web is great. Despite JS.

Re: JavaScript is Eating the World

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take away the web platform, would you still use JS for anything ?

Yes. I've added V8 to my recent C++ project since JS is my favourite scripting language and it does wonders. JS has become a joy to use with ES6.

Compared to Ruby, Python or even Perl 6, I fail to see how anything in JS can be considered a superior option for scripting. Even for simple things like map/filter, reading a file or parsing script args ES7 scores just average. And I'm not even talking about debugging and error handling.

Re: JavaScript is Eating the World

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take away the web platform, would you still use JS for anything ?

I'm with @mscheutz, JS hasa pretty much become my go-to scripting language. It's pretty great for quickly writing up an automation for simple tasks, and I find it's generally easier on the eyes than a shell script.

I have a hard time believing anybody with a taste of Ruby, Python or Perl 6 would choose JS. Are your a front end coder just using the proverbial hammer to the scripting nail ?

Re: JavaScript is Eating the World

#314

I think a few aspects of the language contribute to this: 1. It is relatively easy to comprehend and pick up and play around with. 2. With the advent of node.js, and later electron, it is incredibly relevant whether you're developing web apps, servers, or now, even desktop apps. 3. Some of the newer features, such as arrow functions actually make writing javascript a lot of fun! JS has come a long way. I do think the…

> I think a few aspects of the language contribute to this:

0. You have to use it because it's the only thing in browsers, just like VBA is the "popular" choice for scripting a Microsoft Office application.

Re: JavaScript is Eating the World

#315

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> I don't understand the distinction. The distinction was that cdnsteve was motivated to switch to Python due to issues with the toolchain and build system, not that JavaScript was weakly-typed. > JavaScript tooling is notoriously complicated on the front-end, not the back-end. And I doubt they're saying that they switched to Python on the front-end. You have a good point, though you still have to pull in dependencie…

I still don't see the point, you'll probably need to pull dependencies whether you use is or any other language. And as for build tools, people like to complain way too much, maybe they prefer just using bash scripts instead..

Maybe python's dependency management (pypi/pip) is nicer than NPM? (I think it is, at least)

Re: JavaScript is Eating the World

#316

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Sure it does. Ask a direct question get a direct answer. Backend and file systems, network and systems middleware do not need the abstraction model and overhead of a language designed to add dynamic content to fucking WEBPAGES because it can and it seems easy.

> Backend and file systems, network and systems middleware do not need the abstraction model and overhead of a language designed to add dynamic content to fucking WEBPAGES because it can and it seems easy. Well, file systems nobody writes in JS, so that's irrelevant. As for "network and systems middleware" depending on what it does it can be a great fit for JS and especially Node, which is a lightweight logic layer o…

Too literal. It's the file system syscalls translated into node which are the problem. Anytime you have the potential to block you lose the relatively clean event loop and enter libuv which is a thread provider.

'Lightweight logic layer on top of libuv': well if I can design, predicate and tout my language on 'event' orientation but then when it needs to do something else it becomes a thin logic layer over the hosts threading model: that's just a win!

Re: JavaScript is Eating the World

#317
post #306

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Re: fun... You want to have fun programming, use Lisp. (Which, BTW, invented "arrow" fns ... aka Lambda functions!)

Lisp did not 'invent' Lambda functions, they were invented by Alonzo Church in the 1930s. And even that was only a minor syntactical innovation.

Okay, fine. Lisp was the first programming language with them, and lisp-like programming languages are the only ones still in widespread use that has have had them from the beginning...as opposed to every other random language that eventually figures out that what lisp has is a good idea, and then has to back-patch it into their syntax. I don't get why, since Lisp just comes back again and again and again, people don't just give up and standardize on it, and smooth out the blemishes, strengthen the libraries, and all this language squabbling would just end.

Re: JavaScript is Eating the World

#318
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it does. Ask a direct question get a direct answer. Backend and file systems, network and systems middleware do not need the abstraction model and overhead of a language designed to add dynamic content to fucking WEBPAGES because it can and it seems easy.

Why not? Performance critical parts can be compiled down, which i'm sure most data store libraries already are

My sides.

Re: JavaScript is Eating the World

#319
post #290

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I think static vs. loosely typed both have their pros and cons but that's the thing that's great about the Javascript community. It's not opinionated on things like this. So if you want statically typed, then you can code in Typescript. This is in contrast to something like Rails which is super opinionated and doesn't give you much of a choice if you as a developer or even as a company as a whole were to disagree wit…

Also rails is not a language, it is a framework, aka an opinion. Languages should lean towards being opinion agnostic while frameworks by there very nature should be opinionated.

I think we're on the same page here. Javascript as a language is pretty opinion agnostic. Same with Node, it's just a runtime.

All I'm saying is JS is more than capable of scaling in both complexity and maintainability.

Re: JavaScript is Eating the World

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that really matter? The web is the past, present, and definitely the future. There will be less, and less native apps, and more and more web apps. JS is here to stay, and I'm glad big companies are pouring tons of R&D into making it faster, and easier to use.

It does: let's stop saying JS is great and be honest. The web is great. Despite JS.

and JS is one the major engines driving it forward.
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